~ a New Yorker's American History blog

Presidents Day weekend

I am on the Boltbus to DC. We just crossed under the Hudson into New Jersey.

I was having a conversation with someone the other day in which we were talking about the things that are uniquely of the 21st century. Hard as it is to believe, but we are now more than a full decade into the new millennium. The people of the 20th century saw the introduction of radio, television, and the personal computer. But what is new and unique so far to the 21st century? A few things we came up with were the eReader, the iPad and other tablet devices, and for those who live in the Northeast Corridor, the Boltbus. It has become such a part of the fabric of life in this region. I firmly believe that some filmmaker a half century from now will create a nostalgic scene in which two young lovers, circa 2010, head off for a weekend alone in the big city by taking this cheap and thoroughly enjoyable mass transit. Don’t laugh. Woody Allen did something similar in his depictions of, say, the Automat in Radio Days.

This weekend I am hoping to see the Civil War exhibit at the Library of Congress. Also on the list is the Civil War and American Art show at the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum. This will actually be at the Met later this year, but there is going to be so much to it that I want to see it more than once; viewing art can be exhausting and emotionally draining. Speaking of the Met, this is a Holiday Monday coming up. Winter is a great time to visit, especially with the Matisse show set to run for one more month.

I have blogged about the Met’s New American Wing before. Here is a short video that PBS Channel Thirteen released this week about the works of Augustus Saint-Gaudens at the Metropolitan Museum. It is really something to live in New York and walk past these sculptures every day when going about your business. Yesterday morning I paused briefly in front of Saint-Gaudens’s statue of General Sherman while I was on my way to the dentist. No matter how long I live here, I will aways be a tourist. I love the still photograph in the video of what I assume was the dedication ceremony. It is lost on us today that people turned out by the thousands, even hundreds of thousands, for such occasions. Pretty wild.